ABSTRACT
Borrowing from Tzevetan Todorov’s theoretical postulations of the ‘uncanny’, this chapter titled ‘There are no ghosts, only ghostly tales: Indian horror and the “uncanny” ’ explores certain non-supernatural films variously classified as ‘mystery’, ‘suspense’, ‘slasher’ and ‘psychological’ horrors. The basic structural template of these films, as it is argued in the chapter, is that these narratives maintain the climate of the supernatural throughout and it is only in the denouement that this supernatural is dispelled through rationalisations that seek to erase all that was past. The chapter studies in the main the Malayalam Manichitrathazhu (dir. Fazil, 1993) and Akam (dir. Shalini Usha Nair, 2013), Hindi Woh Kaun Thi? (dir. Raj Khosla, 1964) and Bangla Hanabari (dir. Premendra Mitra, 1952). The chapter concludes that the uncanny is mostly expressed and understood from the perspective of gender: for the female, it is the discourse of the hysteric; while for the male, it is the endorsement of a particular type of masculinity as the normative discourse. In fact, it is also observed that the rationalisation of the fear of the supernatural articulates the identity and desire of marginalised femininities and masculinities.
